


Our New Special Place

by unfolded73



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-05
Updated: 2016-05-05
Packaged: 2018-06-06 12:10:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6753283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma grieves.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our New Special Place

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for 5x20, Firebird. Grief is my jam, I told someone, so how could I not write in the wake of "Firebird"? This fic assumes that at least a week goes by before anything gets better for Emma. Told entirely from her perspective.

The sympathetic stares make her furious.

She doesn’t (can’t) show her face in Granny’s. Too many memories there—memories of quiet, shared conversations in a booth over coffee, memories of watching him help Henry with his math homework. (Because who knew how much trigonometry was necessary for navigating the sea? Not her, not until she sat across from Killian and Henry in that booth, her chest full of pride for her two men.) A different sort of memory infuses the upstairs of the place, where Killian kept a rented room. All of that passion, impossible-to-contain passion, memories that had once left her blushing and suppressing a grin, now are all turned to ash.

So Granny’s is out. But she’s still the sheriff, she still has a job, and all she can do is throw herself back into it, even if it means she has to walk the streets, seeing everyone’s stupid, sympathetic faces. She meets those looks with dead eyes, thinking, _It’s even worse than you imagine, Leroy. It was True Love. Which does me a shit load of good now, but credit where it’s due. I was capable of True Love. Mark it down, put it on a banner across Main Street: EMMA SWAN WAS CAPABLE OF TRUE LOVE TM. Have a parade every year to commemorate it, because it will surely never happen again._

Emma never says any of those things. She just meets their soft-eyed sympathy with steel. She does her job, staying at the station until well into the evening. She appears studiously attentive in the meetings where they strategize how to stop Hades. Regina and Robin have stepped in to take the lead, in the absence left by her inability to give a fuck, and thank God for them both. She can’t imagine how she could do it now. Half the time she almost hopes Hades will take it all, burn it all down, burn the Earth and make all of it part of his Underworld. At least then she might—

She stops herself from even thinking the words. He wanted her to move on, armor off and open to love. Open to life.

What a load of shit.

The docks are another minefield. She doesn’t even like to look east, lest she catch a glimpse of the masts of the _Jolly_ , jutting above the nearby warehouses like a skeleton picked clean. No one’s asked her what to do about his ship yet, and she doesn’t know what she would say if they did. For now, she can’t even bring herself to look at the _Jolly Roger_ , much less set foot on board. She’s not his widow, exactly, but there’s no one else to deal with his possessions, and it’s not as if their relationship was even remotely a secret. Which is why she opens the door to the loft one afternoon to find Granny standing there with a large box in her arms.

“Sorry to bother you, Emma.” There’s that same look on her face, right on cue. She thought if she could have counted on anyone to spare her that look, it would have been pragmatic, unsentimental Granny. No such luck.

“No problem,” Emma says, opening the door wider. Granny comes in and sets the box on the kitchen table. “What do you have there?” Emma asks. She sounds almost normal, conversational. Like a human. _Good job, me_.

Granny is uncharacteristically hesitant, glancing at the floor. “I packed up Hook’s room. I didn’t know who else…” She sighs. “Some of your things were there,” she adds without a hint of judgment. “A couple of sweaters, a pair of earrings… anyway. I thought you might want all of it.” Something in Emma’s expression makes her back pedal. “But if you don’t, I understand. I can take this away. Maybe I shouldn’t’ve... it’s too soon.”

“No, it’s fine.” She’s dying inside at the thought of looking inside that box, but it’s fine. “You can leave it with me.”

“I’ll miss him,” Granny says, and the simple statement brings tears to Emma’s eyes quite suddenly. “Mind you, I won’t miss him taking up space at my counter and not ordering a damn thing,” which makes Emma laugh a hiccuping, watery laugh, “but I wanted to tell you after the funeral, he was a good man, and we’ll all miss him.” She reaches out and takes Emma’s hand and squeezes. Granny’s hand feels calloused and very warm, contributing to the notion that Emma’s own cold hand belongs to a dead person. Looked at a certain way, it does.

Emma is barely aware of what she says in response to Granny; some calming, comforting platitude that sends her on her way. Sparing not a glance at the cursed box, she climbs the stairs and crawls under the blankets on her bed. If there’s one thing she’s become a champion at in the last week, it’s sleeping. She's abandoned the house, the house he chose for them, and come back to stay with David and Mary Margaret. There are too many dark memories in that house, too much to remind her of the myriad of ways that she failed him. As Emma drifts off to sleep, she sees her future laid out before her in high relief, an endless train of work, eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep, fading into the horizon.

When Emma wakes, the touch of Killian’s fingers on her cheek seem so real that her hand rises to her face, searching and finding nothing but the corner of a blanket. Sitting up, she hears the murmur of her parents’ voices below, smells spaghetti sauce simmering on the stove. Emma throws back the covers and makes her way downstairs.

Henry is draped on the couch, Xbox remote clutched between his hands, his eyes intent on the screen, but he stops playing as soon as he notices her.

“Hi, Mom.” He’s up and over for a hug before she can respond. He seems taller with every hug—how is that possible? Henry’s been at Regina’s every night since they got back (another reason to be grateful to Regina); they probably have a cute name for his part of the Hades business. Operation Cerberus. Operation Styx. Operation Mr. Roboto, maybe.

Emma comes out of her musing to see everyone waiting for her to respond to something. “Hmm?” she asks, looking from one face to another.

“What’s the box?” Mary Margaret repeats patiently. They are all so infinitely patient with her, every moment of the day, and it makes her want to scream.

Emma looks at the box and flinches. “Nothing.” The expectant looks continue. Henry’s eyes are filled with concern, the same way they have been all week, and Emma mentally adds another tick mark in the long column entitled _Guilt, Henry_. This one is for worrying him so much with her own grief that he doesn’t have the capacity to process his own.

“It’s…” she begins when she realizes ‘nothing’ isn’t going to suffice. “It’s Killian’s things from his room at Granny’s.” More sympathetic faces. Emma imagines setting the box on fire and pushing it out to sea.

Mary Margaret comes to her rescue. “Why don’t I put it away for now, and if you want, you can open it another time. When you’re ready.” She’s already carrying it to the other side of the loft, and when it’s out of sight, Emma breathes a sigh of relief.

They eat dinner, Emma forcing herself to put food in her mouth and chew and swallow, because otherwise, more concern, more worry, more sympathy. There is conversation, soap bubbles of speech floating up and over her head without her taking any notice of them. Henry has made a point of sitting in the chair that Hook used to occupy when he joined her family for dinner. Most of the memories of those meals are vague and sepia-toned. It feels like such a long time ago, before the Underworld, before Camelot… before the Darkness took her. Before she watched him die.

Killian would take off his short leather jacket and drape it over the back of the kitchen chair where he sat, slouching down, his legs stretched out under the table until David got annoyed with him and kicked his booted foot. He would laugh too loud and tell jokes that got a blush from Henry and a scold from Mary Margaret. Their hands would lace together on the table between their plates, and he would unashamedly caress her fingers. He would take advantage of her parents’ occasional preoccupation with the baby to throw her a lascivious glance that left her itching to get him alone. God, had she never appreciated how _happy_ she’d been in those moments? Her parents and her son and her lover, all together under one roof. Emma closes her eyes, and for a moment she imagines she can smell him, all leather and sweat and spicy cologne. It takes her breath away.

“Mom, do you want to take a walk with me?”

Emma blinks, emerging from the reverie. “A walk?”

Henry shrugs. “Yeah?”

She can sense her parents’ anxiety from across the table. They are on the edge of their seats, as if they are hoping for a sign that she won’t stay this sad, hollow woman forever.

“Sure, kiddo, let’s go for a walk.”

The wind that lifts her hair as they walk is warm, unseasonably warm for this early in spring. It feels like another cosmic joke, the sight of the trees starting to bud and barren lawns turning green. Henry’s long legs keep pace with hers as they amble along.

After a long silence, Henry finally speaks. “Mom, I know you don’t want to talk about it, but … I need to write about what happened in the Underworld. The last part, I mean. I need to tell _your_ story. When you and Hook—”

“Henry, I don’t think I can.”

“You don’t have to tell me everything. I mean, I was able to piece some of it together, but I still don’t know about the test.” She tries countering him with a raised eyebrow, sort of the way Killian would, but it doesn’t work. “Please, Mom.”

Emma sighs. “What do you want to know?” She hasn’t really talked about it to anyone yet.

Henry beckons her to follow him as he crosses the street, all business now. He’s no longer a boy worried about his mom, he’s the Author. “What exactly _was_ the test?”

She tries to match his tone. Maybe if she is completely clinical about it, she can just about survive this conversation. “There were scales. On a pedestal. The instructions were in Greek, but Hook translated them.”

“What did—”

“‘Only a heart filled with true love can pass’.”

Henry stops walking and looks at her. Emma stares at her shoes.

“It was a test of true love.”

“Yeah.”

“And you passed.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.” His voice trembles a little, and she really can’t look at him now, not if she wants to hold it together. She’s already cried in public more in the last week than she thought was possible, and she’d really prefer not to do it again, thank you very much.

“Maybe … maybe just this once I could break the rules. I could write him back to life for you.”

That brings her head up with a jerk. “Henry, no.”

“Just once, and then I’d never do it again. It wouldn’t be like the last Author, it would… This would be different.”

Emma is brightly, sharply furious with the universe, with whatever gods or authors or sorcerers made these fairy tales real, and burdened _her child_ with this terrible responsibility at thirteen. Put him in a position where he would offer to break the sacred rules of his office just to try to make his mother happy.

“It wouldn’t be,” she says, taking his shoulders in her still-cold hands. “It would be a mistake, just like what I did with Excalibur was a mistake. There would be a price, and there is no way I would let you pay that price.”

His expression is solemn, and in that moment, he is so much the little boy who faced her down at ten years old, the force of nature that brought her to this place and told her that fairy tales were real. He just nods. 

After a beat they continue to walk, a silent agreement between them to never speak of this again. 

Emma is so lost in thought that she doesn’t realize where Henry has been leading them until the pavement turns to wood under her feet. She stops and looks up and the ship is just _there_ , filling her vision. She wants to turn and run, but her flesh and blood who just minutes ago offered to sacrifice everything for her has brought them here, and just now she won’t deny him anything. When Henry walks up the ramp onto the deck of the _Jolly Roger_ , she follows.

She reverently climbs the stairs and walks up to the huge wooden wheel that dominates the quarterdeck, running her hand along the smooth, carved wood. Well, not exactly smooth; every handle is marred with scrapes and tiny gouges. Her fingers register the marks long before her brain catches up and deduces why the marks are there. She can suddenly see Killian so clearly, standing at the wheel, steering it with that hook. Her stomach lurches.

Henry has pulled himself up to sit on the ship’s railing, so Emma joins him. She nudges his knee with her own. 

“I’ve been coming here a lot to think this week,” Henry says.

“You have?” Always hidden depths with her son, and as he gets older, the depths get deeper. “Why?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I sit here, and I feel the ship rocking on the water, and I listen to the creak of the wood, and it’s just … soothing, you know?”

“It _is_ soothing,” Emma agrees, smiling with a memory. “I spent the night on this ship a couple of times, and it was really nice.” Realizing what she’s just said to her son, she hastily adds, “Sleeping, I mean. Sleeping was nice.”

Henry rolls his eyes. “Mom.”

“I shouldn’t have told you that.”

“Mom, I’m fourteen, it’s not like I wasn’t aware that you and Hook... you know,” he says in that deep voice that is still strange to her, that she wonders if she’ll ever get used to coming from his mouth. “But also, gross.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

They sit in silence for a while, the breeze riffling their hair and carrying the briny scent of the ocean. Emma just concentrates on breathing it in and out, letting her eyes close and focusing on the smell and the sound of this place. Gulls call out. Water slaps against the hull rhythmically. She licks her lips and tastes salt.

“Mom?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember the playground where we used to meet when you first came to Storybrooke?”

Emma opens her eyes. “Of course I do. Our special place.”

“Exactly.” Henry isn’t looking at her, he’s looking out to the ocean. “I thought maybe this could be, you know. Our new special place. Maybe we could even sail her sometimes, you and me.”

Tears come again, but for once she doesn’t feel like she’s choking on them. They fall easily down her cheeks. “I would like that.”

After another long silence, Henry offers, “Operation Persephone.”

“Huh?”

“My part of the plan to stop Hades. That’s what I’m calling it. Zelena’s going to be crucial to its success, that’s why I named it after Persephone. Can I run it by you?”

Emma smiles. “I would love for you to.”


End file.
